


Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #7

by dairesfanficrefuge_archivist



Category: Highlander - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-31
Updated: 1999-12-31
Packaged: 2018-12-18 06:00:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist/pseuds/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist
Summary: by Robin, wendy, Palladia, Storie





	Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #7

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Daire, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Daire's Fanfic Refuge](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Daire%27s_Fanfic_Refuge). Deciding to give the stories a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Daire's Fanfic Refuge's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/dairesfanficrefuge/profile).

 

CIMWC #7

**Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #7**

* * *

**First Birthday by Robin**   
Revisionist History by wendy   
Inchworm Inchworm by Palladia   
Rich Man by Storie 

* * *

**First Birthday  
by Robin**

"Cassandra, why are you so melancholy today?" Ray asked corcerned. 

She smiled slightly, "Today is Methos' birthday, at least the one he had chosen this time around." Methos changed his birth date every hundred years or so just to keep it interesting. 

Ray put his arm around her really to be anything she needed him to be. Her friend, Her Watcher, Her lover. 

"I spent so much of my life hating him and now that I have his Quickening I understand him." Kevin had killed Methos but couldn't handle the Quickening, Cassandra had taken Kevin's head. "Now it is the first birthday without him and I'm not sure how to feel." She turned and looked up into Ray's eyes. 

"Let's throw a party. MacLeod is in town and so is Amanda. Let me call Joe's and see if we can get the place to ourselves." 

Cassandra hugged him and smiled her thanks. 

* * *

**Revisionist History  
by wendy**

"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm sorry, okay? Really, really sorry." Amanda had to run to keep up with him. 

"Go away, Amanda." Methos looked up and down the block; damn, didn't Chicago have _any_ cabs? He knew he should have stayed in London. "Just get away from me. And stay away, for a very long time." 

"But I didn't -- " 

"Didn't know? I'm sorry, I don't believe you. It's not possible for anybody to be that stupid." 

"I am, I'm that stupid. I'm incredibly stupid. And I'm sorry, I really really am. Please forgive me." 

"Never." 

"But I meant well." 

"Amanda," Methos sighed heavily and turned to face his favorite idiot. "A bottle of champagne would be a sign that you meant well. A nice chocolate cake. And it was a lovely setting, I can't fault you for that. But the candles, Amanda, the candles. Don't you ever think?" 

"I know, I know, I beg you...." 

"No, Amanda. Not this time." 

"I gave you my house." 

"You mean your smoldering vacant lot." 

"You've killed me fourteen times in two days, isn't that enough punishment?" 

"No. I'll kill you every hour on the hour until you go away and leave me alone. 5,000 candles may have been your idea of inspired décor, but... and then to lay the blame on poor Mrs. O'Leary's cow! Don't let me see your face for at least a hundred years. And even then, I'll pretend I don't know you." 

* * *

**Inchworm Inchworm  
by Palladia**

"We'll let his birthday go with a few little things, and _then_ we'll get him, a week later! We can do it afterhours, at Joe's." 

Amanda wore a sly, delighted smile, and began to make her plans. Duncan found himself wondering how Methos, after all these years, would have the slightest notion when his birthday was. Maybe, like the Queen of England, picked an Official Birthday and let it go at that. 

~~~ 

There was a longish, heavy package hidden behind the bar, festively wrapped and ribboned. Duncan and Methos were well into their fifth beers. Joe lifted the package, set it on the bar in front of Methos, and said, "It's a little late, but you know what they say. . ." 

Methos hefted it, feeling the solid weight. What the hell had they done this time? He opened it, carefully, as if it might be a bomb. There was a lot of printing on the box, once he got the metallic wrapping paper off. 

"Carbon dioxide," he read, and turned when he felt the heat behind him. Amanda stood there, wearing heavy cooking gloves, her arms extended in front of her. She carried a sheet cake covered with tiny cake candles, shoulder to shoulder, ablaze. 

Methos clawed the box open, jerked out the fire extinguisher, and sprayed out the candles. 

"Happy birthday, dear. . ." the name was garbled, as pseudonyms mixed and clashed. 

He managed a smile which looked almost authentic, just like the surprise. 

The song that his mind had lately substituted for the "happy birthday" anthem pattered through his mind, measuring eternity. 

* * *

**Rich Man  
by Storie**

_Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief._

He laughed softly. Even little girls needed something to believe in. If nursery rhymes were powerless to predict the careers of future husbands, they were nonetheless handy for other amusements. Trouble was, he'd fulfilled the duties, prophecies and expectations of them all before, and more than once. 

_Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor-_ well, maybe not a sailor. 

It wasn't as though he had many choices, here. The doctor, the lawyer, the enigmatic ancient remained above all else a nomad. Recent wanderings had led him far from civilizations as most cultures defined them, and into a desert domain of featureless rock and heat and sand and of people who lived in a world that had disowned them long ago. 

He was whiter, his hair and eyes a different color, and his clothes screamed to all that here was an outsider, a trespasser across their barren land. The residents gazed at him with more curiosity than hostility. His appearance smacked of a culture that held bizarre notions of what constituted wealth, and they wondered why a man accustomed to everything would deign to walk so casually amidst vast stretches of nothing. 

He spoke their language. And so they did not ask, and he did not tell, and they shared a meal, and he doctored their sick children and old women and animals, and they offered him a tent and invited him to stay. 

He was undecided. He took a walk in the late evening across monotonous terrain that did not change, except the tents became small and disappeared behind him. The sky was wide and filled with stars, and the moon cast an ethereal luminosity that dissipated the heat of the day and softened ordinary rocks into lovely shadows. Imagination worked her magic, luring him to partake of the transformation. 

There was laughter as he returned to the tents, and children were singing. The song was familiar. He stopped and stared. How could that be, here? He had escaped it all on this month, the accepted time of his birth, to deliberate rather than to celebrate. Missionaries, he thought. They went everywhere with their message, and he commended their faith, envied it even, though he could not confess to sharing it. Such had to be the origin of this song in this place. 

They saw him approaching, and the children ran to meet him. They sang the song before him, and he wondered if they even knew what they were saying, the English so foreign to their tongues, the words so out of place in this world. They could not know this about him. The initial despair that arose at the invasion of his privacy gave way unexpectedly to appreciation that, on some level, he had not been forgotten. 

'Happy birthday to you!' 

A little girl with a smile more brilliant than all the stars above held out her hand. He knelt before her and opened his hands to receive what she offered. It was a stone. An ordinary rock, with no special colors or designs or shapes, and of no value whatsoever until a child carried it in her small hands all day long, playing with it, imagining about it, creating uses for it, becoming familiar with it until of all the rocks scattered across the hard, unforgiving earth, this one became exclusively hers; and, once hers, a gift to give, more precious than any diamond because it represented all the love in her heart and that, ultimately, was all the child had to offer. 

He accepted the gift, the song and the destiny. He fell asleep wrapped in a borrowed robe, in a borrowed tent, with the sharpness of the stone digging into his palm. 

_Happy birthday,_ he sighed. _Happy birthday to me._

* * *

Home 


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